1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, an image forming method, an image forming program, and a recording medium, and more specifically, an image forming apparatus, an image forming method, an image forming program, and a recording medium that perform image formation processing appropriately by keeping a maximum number of sheets to be printed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in image forming apparatuses such as a facsimile, a copying machine, a multifunction peripheral, and a printer, in order to save paper resources, other expendable supplies, power consumption, and the like, a limit is often set to the number of images to be formed in each image forming apparatus.
Especially in recent years, in accordance with rapid prevalence of image forming apparatuses, many image forming apparatuses have been connected to networks, and image forming is performed by using a plurality of image forming apparatuses, and hence, reduction in a total cost of ownership (TCO) becomes important in offices and the like. In order to reduce the amount of paper consumption, the consumption of other expendable supplies, and the power consumption, it is necessary to set an upper limit on a use of resources in each of the image forming apparatuses. Namely, it is necessary to set an upper limit on the number of printable sheets with each of the image forming apparatuses to restrict the number of sheets that are going to be printed.
In addition, in the image forming apparatuses, in order to improve a productivity of image forming (printing), there is an approach termed “advanced sheet feeding” in which a sheet as a target for printing is conveyed from a sheet feed tray to an image forming unit and a sheet for the next page starts to be fed from the sheet feed tray in a state in which a sheet for the previous page (a sheet previously fed) is present on a conveying path along which the sheet having an image formed thereon by the image forming unit is discharged to a discharge tray. That is, an improvement in productivity is achieved by performing high-speed feeding that is realized by decreasing an inter-sheet spacing that is a spacing between two successive sheets.
Regarding a setting of the upper limit on the number of printable sheets, conventionally, a technique is proposed to stop feeding a sheet from a sheet feeding unit when the sum of the number of sheets that are still on a conveying path after being sent out from the sheet feeding unit and the number of sheets that have been discharged to a discharge unit reaches an upper limit on the number of sheets (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-80624).
However, according to the above-described conventional technique, when the number of printed sheets, which is counted by including the number of sheets present on the conveying path, reaches the upper limit on the number of printable sheets, the feeding of sheets from the sheet feed tray is stopped. Accordingly, the feeding is abruptly stopped while high-speed feeding is performed with a small inter-sheet spacing to increase a load applied to a sheet feeding mechanism. As a result, there arises a problem in that a size of the sheet feeding mechanism becomes large to increase a cost for producing a sheet feeding apparatus.